Cartesian product

The Cartesian product of two sets A and B is the set (usually denoted by A × B) consisting of all ordered pairs (a, b) where $a\in A$ and $b\in B$. The Cartesian product is named after René Descartes, who invented this concept.

A common example of a Cartesian product is the coordinate plane, $\mathbb {R} ^{2}$. This is all ordered pairs (a,b) of real numbers a and b. It is used for graphing functions on the real numbers.

See also

• product
• dot product
• cross product
• infinite product